Syria's War: The Next Phase

"Moderate" myth is dropped as West prepares to leverage terror threat to end war in their favor.

December 13, 2013 (Tony Cartalucci) - The alleged fleeing of General Selim Idriss of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA), was more symbolic than anything else. Whether or not he really fled, and whether he is in Turkey or Qatar is of little consequence. The so-called "moderates" he commanded were nothing more than a smokescreen, a cheap veneer applied to the hardcore Wahabist extremists of Al Qaeda's Al Nusra franchise and similar fronts that have formed the core of foreign-backed militancy turned against the Syrian people from the very beginning of the conflict.

Image (AFP Photo/Daniel Leal-Olivas): The West has abandoned the "moderate" myth to fully embrace the terror menace it itself has created in Syria. By threatening Syria's allies with a prolonged Iraq-style terror threat, and the possibility of it being used as a springboard for operations elsewhere, it hopes to pressure the end of their support for the Syrian government and an end to the conflict favorable for Western interests. Instead, this new "terror threat" gives Syria's allies a chance to more openly and extensively support Syria to combat what is truly a "war on terror."

"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

While the initial conflict was disingenuously portrayed as the spontaneous militarization of unarmed protesters fighting against a "brutal regime," in reality Al Nusra was already inside the country and operating on a national scale. The US State Department itself would reveal this in its December 2012 "Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa'ida in Iraq," which stated:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

And while the West has attempted to portray these extremist groups as entities entirely separate from the "moderates" they have claimed to be openly training, funding, arming, and equipping to the tune of billions of dollars, there is no other logical explanation for Al Nusra's ability to rise above these Western-backed "moderates," unless of course they never existed and the West was, as was planned in 2007, simply arming Al Qaeda all along.

In Hersh's 2007 report, it was noted that the West could not directly arm or fund the militant groups and that the US and Israel would have to funnel weapons and cash through nations like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon instead. Since 2011 when these plans went fully operational, Qatar and Turkey have also entered the fray. When questions are raised about Al Nusra's rising prominence in the conflict, the West has been increasingly unsuccessful in convincing the world of its own plausible deniability.

As the Syrian government began early this year to decisively turn the tide against the West's proxy invasion, and after several abortive attempts to directly intervene militarily, the West appears to have resigned the myth of "moderates" and as of this week, symbolically ended its so-called "non-lethal aid" to terrorists operating in Syria. In fact, the myth of "moderates" was perpetuated solely to justify intervening directly on their behalf. With direct intervention taken off the table, it appears a new phase in the war has begun.

Indeed, the West has claimed it has stopped the flow of aid to its "moderate" proxies, however, in practice, billions of dollars of equipment, weapons, and other forms of support will continue to flow so long as there are forces of any kind fighting inside of Syria against the government and its people.

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.

Of course, Saudi Arabia owes its entire existence to the United States - from its oil infrastructure, its military, and even its brutal internal security forces - any real rift between the US and the Saudis would be a gust of wind upon a shaky house of cards.

In reality, the rift is nothing more than political cover for the West as Saudi Arabia plans a more open and aggressive proxy campaign against Syria. As it directly arms and builds up legions of Al Qaeda, this rift will afford the United States who will in fact still be assisting Saudi Arabia in its proxy war, a degree of plausible deniability.

No one is expecting a tank invasion of Saudi Arabia anytime soon, but the kingdom just put in a huge order for U.S.-made anti-tank missiles that has Saudi-watchers scratching their heads and wondering whether the deal is related to Riyadh's support for the Syrian rebels.

The proposed weapons deal, which the Pentagon notified Congress of in early December, would provide Riyadh with more than 15,000 Raytheon anti-tank missiles at a cost of over $1 billion.

Foreign Policy would go on to explain how the scheme would work, with the US replacing Saudi Arabia's current arsenal while Saudi Arabia unloaded its older weapons onto terrorist armies invading Syria. FP reports:

But while the latest American anti-tank weapons might not be showing up in Aleppo anytime soon, that doesn't mean the deal is totally disconnected from Saudi efforts to arm the Syrian rebels. What may be happening, analysts say, is that the Saudis are sending their stockpiles of anti-tank weapons bought from elsewhere to Syria and are purchasing U.S. missiles to replenish their own stockpiles. "I would speculate that with an order of this size, the Saudis were flushing their current stocks in the direction of the opposition and replacing them with new munitions," said Charles Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Saudis' Terror Legions Not Enough to Win War - West Has Another Plan
Of course, with Syria's army already decisively on the offensive, restoring order to large swaths of Syrian territory and with the West's terrorist proxies in many cases surrounded and cut off completely by Syrian forces, simply increasing arms shipments will not make much of a difference - it will only prolong the inevitable and leave a lower intensity terror campaign like that seen currently in Iraq.

With the West dumping the "moderate" narrative and acknowledging that Al Qaeda is all that is left fighting in Syria, it is preparing to leverage that terror threat and the possibility of its ally Saudi Arabia enhancing that threat as leverage with the Russians to cut ties and support for the Syrian government and bring the conflict to an end favorable to the West which started it in the first place.

For the past two and a half years, as the civil war in Syria has descended into brutal bloodletting and spilled over its borders, Obama administration officials have consistently decried the growing presence of Islamist extremists in the conflict. But on Wednesday, Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken turned that logic on its head: The growing role of extremist groups may actually be a good thing for bringing the conflict to a close, he said.

Speaking at Transformational Trends, a conference co-hosted by Foreign Policy and the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department, Blinken said that the radicalization of the conflict may create a shared interest among world powers to bring the war to an end. The growing prominence of radical groups has "begun to concentrate the minds of critical actors outside of Syria" and may strip the Bashar al-Assad regime of the key international backing that has so far helped to keep him in power.

If anything, however, such a move should be perceived by the world as the West conceding defeat and the resignation of its "global order" that once constituted hegemonic superiority. Syria's allies should take this new designation of the conflict in Syria as a "terror threat" as an opportunity to expand open support for the Syrian government to carry out sweeping anti-terror operations. Russia, China, Iran, and all other nations of good will should go to the UN seeking binding resolutions to help the Syrian government fight what is admitted now even by the West as a "war on terror."

The arrogance of the West may have just dealt the final blow to their global power and influence through this last attempt to leverage their own terror-front to end the conflict in their favor. Syria and its allies should take this opportunity to both expose the West and its regional axis of terror, and stop the war in Syria not with conditions favorable for the West and their regional ambitions, but with conditions favorable for the Syrian people.